Conventional radar detectors almost universally employ scanning super-heterodyne receiver architectures. To achieve good sensitivity with lower cost, conventional radar detectors tend to sweep relatively slowly, often requiring several tenths of a second to sweep a covered spectrum. As a result, some radar gun manufacturers have developed radar gun designs that transmit very brief pulses as a technique for avoiding detection. The brief transmission is of a relatively short duration and may be conveniently referred to as a “POP transmission” which is a phrase coined and trademarked by MPH Industries. A detector with sweep periods lasting several tenths of a second is likely to entirely miss a radar gun transmission that lasts only in the neighborhood of no more than several tens of milliseconds. One approach for a detector design may involve sweeping the spectrum much faster to try to intercept these brief transmissions. In this way, the detector will tune through the transmission frequency during the interval that the radar signal is actually present. However, this approach will greatly increase the required bandwidth of the detector's receiver. Because the received signal power remains unchanged in the increased bandwidth, the signal-to-noise ratio degrades and a commensurate decrease in threshold sensitivity occurs.
Thus, there remains a need for another approach to reliably detecting these brief radar gun transmissions that avoids undue loss of the signal-to-noise ratio.